Cloud Digital Leader Practice Question: Google Cloud products, services, and solutions
A company wants its internal applications to be accessible via a custom domain name (e.g., `app.company.com`) that routes to their Google Cloud load balancer. Which Google Cloud service manages DNS records for this?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse services that handle traffic (like Cloud Load Balancing or Cloud Armor) with the service that manages DNS records, leading candidates to pick a service that operates at a different layer of the network stack.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Cloud DNS
Cloud DNS is the correct service because it is Google Cloud's managed DNS service that translates human-readable domain names (like app.company.com) into IP addresses. It allows you to create and manage DNS records (such as A, CNAME, or ALIAS records) that point your custom domain to the IP address or hostname of your Google Cloud load balancer, enabling traffic routing to your internal applications.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Cloud CDN — it manages domain names for cached content.
Why it's wrong here
Cloud CDN is a content delivery network that caches static and dynamic content at Google's global edge points of presence to reduce latency. It does not manage DNS records or domain name resolution; custom domain names are mapped to load balancer IPs via Cloud DNS. CDN relies on the load balancer's IP and DNS configuration to serve content, but it does not assign or manage domain names.
- ✓
Cloud DNS
Why this is correct
Cloud DNS is GCP's authoritative, managed DNS service that lets you create public or private zones and manage records like A, AAAA, and CNAME. To route app.company.com to a GCP load balancer, you add an A record mapping that hostname to the load balancer's static IPv4 address. Because Cloud DNS uses anycast routing, it provides fast, reliable resolution and is the correct service for custom domain name mapping.
- ✗
Cloud Load Balancing — it automatically assigns domain names.
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Load Balancing distributes incoming traffic across backend instances using global anycast IP addresses and configurable policies like latency or proximity. However, the load balancer only exposes an IP address; it cannot assign or manage domain names. To reach that IP via a custom domain such as app.company.com, you must create a DNS record in Cloud DNS that points the domain to the load balancer's IP.
- ✗
Cloud Armor — it routes traffic based on domain names.
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Armor is a GCP security service offering DDoS protection and a Web Application Firewall (WAF) that applies allow/deny rules based on IP addresses, geolocation, and HTTP headers. It operates at the HTTP/S layer and performs no DNS resolution or domain-based routing; those functions belong to Cloud DNS records. Cloud Armor can be attached to a load balancer to filter traffic, but it never creates domain name mappings.
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Cloud Digital Transformation
Key term
Cloud DNS
A managed domain name system service that translates human-readable domain names into IP addresses, enabling reliable and scalable network routing in cloud environments.
Key term
Load balancer
A load balancer is a device or software that distributes incoming network traffic across multiple servers so no single server gets overwhelmed.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This GCDL practice question is part of Courseiva's free Google Cloud certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the GCDL exam.